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Transmode upgrades metro network in the Canary Islands

Packet-optical equipment developer Transmode has deployed a high-capacity network based on its TM-Series and TG-Series platforms for the Tenerife Island Council (Cabildo Insular de Tenerife) in the Canary Islands.

The new metro optical network will connect all the council’s facilities and offices across the island, providing high-capacity access to the D-ALiX carrier-neutral data centre location.

D-ALiX, formerly the Western Africa-Canary Islands Network Access Point, is a strategic hub in the south of Tenerife that provides international connectivity via submarine cables - both existing and planned - to Africa and the rest of the world.

The new packet-optical network connects 38 council sites on Tenerife in a multiple ring configuration for protection and resiliency. Council departments at each site can connect to a high-speed local area network and run managed, differentiated services over a 40-wavelength flexible optical network controlled by Transmode's Enlighten multi-layer management suite.

In addition to the TM-Series placket optical platform and TG-Series passive optical access platform, Tenerife Island Council deployed Transmode's family of EMXP packet-optical transport switches, which provide Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services over an Ethernet layer with carrier-class resilience and performance.

Transmode says the optical layer of the network is significant because the unusual band-pass architecture allows the network to be deployed without remote amplification outside the central offices. This greatly simplifies network installation procedures and reduces cost through the use of simple common configurations in all remote customer premises nodes.

"After a competitive tender, we selected Transmode's solution," said Carlos Alonso Rodríguez, president of Tenerife Island Council. "Transmode was the only vendor able to provide a solution that was easy to roll out without the need for amplification at any of the remote locations.”

The integrated software enables network operators to understand the exact routing of fibre and the location of all network elements such as fibres and ducts, remote passive WDM filters and splice chambers. The ability to visualise the physical layer in relation to service delivery is increasingly important higher-layer functionality is added to packet-optical systems and as WDM-based optical networks push deeper into local access networks, making networks more complex to manage.

Sten Nordell, Transmode's chief technology officer, said: "Network management has been a development focus area of Transmode's as the sophistication of the networks we deploy has rapidly increased with Ethernet and MPLS-TP functionality and the completion of our first steps of transition to the SDN environment. Integrating tools such as APEX into the Enlighten Suite helps our customers deploy these solutions in real world environments and address the practical challenges associated with network deployment and ongoing maintenance."

BT has made an offer to the UK government to voluntarily provide high-speed broadband to 99 per cent all homes and businesses across the country within five years, which would largely be delivered by Openreach.

The government said it received the offer after it committed to introduce a Universal Service Obligation (USO) through regulation to give every home and business in the UK the right to request a high-speed connection of at least 10Mb/s.